Walkout criticized, supported at meeting
Students, other community residents, district officials and school board members sound off about recent events
EAST ROCKHILL » More than half of the students at Pennridge High School chose to not take part in either the remembrance assembly at the school or the National School Walkout.
Both were observed at the school on March 14, the one-month anniversary of the shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Pennridge225, the group of students who took part in the walkout for which they received Saturday morning detentions, has gathered national
attention on social media and in publications including Newsweek.
“The detentions assigned were in no way meant to punish students for exercising their First Amendment rights. They were strictly for violating a school rule,” Superintendent Dr. Jacqueline Rattigan said at the March 26 Pennridge School Board meeting.
Students and parents were notified about the consequences of leaving school without permission; the rules are also listed in the school’s handbook, district officials said following the walkout.
Students at the school spoke to administrators prior to March 14 about leaving the school to show solidarity with the Parkland students by walking around the school track and reading the names of the shooting victims, Rattigan said.
“The students made it clear from the start that their actions were not going to be in any way political,” she said.
Because of safety concerns that the track would be a “soft target” for an attack, the plan was changed to an indoor remembrance assembly, she said.
Of the 2,342 students at the school, 49.4 percent stayed in their classroom, 34.2 went to the remembrance assemblies, 9.6 percent took part in the walkout at the flag pole on school grounds, 6.5 percent were absent, 0.2 percent left the campus and 0.1 percent were tardy until after the assemblies and the walkout, she said.
There have been calls and emails both for and against the district’s response to the walkout, with the majority being against, she said.
The high school staff followed directions from herself and the school board, Rattigan said.
“Their only goal was to work collaboratively with student leaders to find an honorable way to remember the victims from this tragic event. It truly saddens me that the district’s actions regarding this event
have caused such dissension in our community and have attracted such widespread attention,” Rattigan said. “I believe that it is in everyone’s best interest to put this event behind us and to focus on what is really important — education of our students. Let us all put politics aside and devote our energy and our efforts into praying for and/ or remembering the victims and their families and in cooperatively working to make our schools as safe as they can be so an incident such as the one in Parkland never happens in Pennridge or any other school community ever again.”
During public comment, Bedminster resident Kenneth Miller said board members should put aside their own political and personal beliefs and think instead about the education and safety of the students.
“I don’t think they were pushed by an agenda like some have said,” Miller said of the students. “I think they really do have a concern, and they were very peaceful, respectful, no instances, and I’m proud of all the students, not just the ones that walked out. I’m proud of the ones that
went to the auditorium and I’m proud of the ones that stayed in the classroom, proud of the ones that stayed home.”
Miller also asked about the district response to another walkout proposed for April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings.
No response was immediately given. Board President Christine Yardley said later in the meeting the district cannot yet give an answer but will let people know after finding out more about what is planned.
In other public comment, Perkasie resident Kim Bedillion thanked the district for providing a safe place inside the school for the remembrance assembly.
“I know there is a small but vocal minority who has criticized your wellthought-out plan because it included enforcement of the policies set forth in the school handbook,” she said. “Please rest assured that there is a non-vocal majority who supports your decision.”
“A lot of people are losing focus here. This board is here to help the administration to educate students,” Hilltown resident Kevin Yardley said. “If you want to talk about politics, do it in the right forum, not here. This is about educating students.”
“I don’t like the assumption that I heard a few of the board members make that there was an anti-police sentiment involved with the march,” Bedminster resident Tina Gerhart said.
The students did not have any ulterior motives, she said.
“They just want their schools to be safe. They want a really safe atmosphere conducive to learning, not with worry, not with fear,” Gerhart said.
“I don’t have a problem with the detentions. I have a problem with board members condescending to me and taking up keyboard courage to criticize the beliefs of my classmates and myself,” Pennridge senior Anna Sophie Tinneny, one of the students who took part in the walkout, said. “It is time for this board to not only hear what students have to say but use the listening skills that we all learned at Grasse, Seylar and all the other Pennridge elementary schools.”
Jayson Badal, another Pennridge senior who took part in the walkout, said the fact that 225 of the school’s students walked out for what they believed in shows that the school’s administration is doing something right in what it teaches.
“Peaceful, civil discourse, that’s what this was,” he said. “This was not an antipolice thing. I held a sign that says we support the police.”
“The students did not make this political,” Hilltown resident Kathy Macaulay said. “This whole situation has been blown out of proportion by school board members that took it upon themselves on their political issues and their beliefs.”
She said school board members should not be tweeting to students.
“The problem with allowing a walkout for one issue is that it sets a precedent for future issues. The board
and administration are not the moral authority,” board member Meghan Banis-Clemens said. “We cannot pick and choose which issues to waive consequences for and which ones to enforce. They must be enforced fairly and consistently across the board.”
There are a variety of perspectives of what the walkout was about, she said.
“In a public school system, we have to be careful not to take sides and to make sure the rights of all students are protected and school policies are enforced
consistently across the board.”
In answer to comments about board members and their social media use, board member Joan Cullen said, “If someone asks a question, it would be rude not to respond, so that was what I did, and to the greater point that seems to be troubling everyone is this idea of personal politics somehow making it impossible to be fair. A person can disagree with you strongly and still treat you fairly.”
She said she wants to maintain a safe learning environment that is free from undue disruption.
“I’m a member of the NRA, but if this were a walkout to support the
NRA’s school safety platform, my answer would have been the same,” Cullen said. “You may walk out and say whatever you like, but you’ll have to suffer the consequence for that.”
“Our job as educators should be to serve our students and lift them up and we need to support them. I don’t know that we did that on March 14,” Yardley said.
“It didn’t have to be Republicans versus Democrats or First Amendment versus Second Amendment,” she said.
“I believe that Pennridge missed the opportunity to allow students to voice their opinions about school safety without being punished for that,” Yardley said.